Alexander Edmond’s article “The Poor have the right to be beautiful” not only struck me as interesting but reiterated information I had heard little about. I have learned from various articles that Brazil had become the plastic surgery capital of the world but I didn’t realize that it was accessible to women and men that did not have the funds to cover the medical procedure. I feel as though anyone and everyone should be entitled to feel good but I do not necessarily agree that plastic surgery is the answer. It was interesting to note that even the surgeons are supporting plastica and that they felt strongly that the poor should have access to it. For me it seems to go against the norm for us to think that beauty is free, when we know it isn’t. To be honest, I feel as though with how fashion and beauty are portrayed today in our society its hard not to believe that models are the ‘real’ people. Women, especially women interested and surrounded in fashion are pumped everyday by seeing advertisements and fashion editorials of extremely over dramatized, tall, super slender women portrayed as ‘goddesses’. If you start to examine photographs such as this one of Kate Moss shot by Mario Testino you can see that in order to elongate the model the position of the camera is lowered down and pointed upwards. This allows the viewer to not only feel as though they are looking up at another woman who is wearing make up and expensive clothes but it allows the viewer to believe that she is idolized. From this moment on men and women start to believe that this is how we should look and this is what is accepted and also that this is the standard for beauty. It is no wonder why women around the world feel as though they need to have surgery to change the way they were created in order to feel like the povao ‘the common people’. It was interesting to note within the article that not only did patients wait in line for numerous years to receive free surgery but that the surgeons allow themselves to fall in love with the physical form he/she creates, even though it may not be what the patient asked for. Upon further reading this article I couldn’t help but think about the commercial that Dove created called “Evolution”. I was hard to believe that they were able to take a regular looking woman and transform her into a superficial character. This was an advertisement created in order to portray the idea of natural beauty with its imperfections transformed into ‘retouched glamour’. It really is no wonder how our perceptions of beauty have been distorted.

Shopping malls and shopping complexes are ever changing. They change to suit consumers wants and needs as well as comforts, a large point raised in this weeks reading, And Then There Was Shopping. This article not only raised many points about how we are constantly being watched and surveyed by retail markets in order to give us what we want, but also, how technology plays a large role. When we think about it, it is crazy to learn that retail has 17 percent of the workforce- more than any other field and yet it is the most unstable.

One point in the reading that interested me was how technology has played a big hand in raising the desire for material goods. Of course, there is the commercial side of this aspect, the advertisements, but technology has allowed the design and information of shopping malls to cater to its consumers. Having lived in 4 different countries it has been interesting to see how different shopping malls are. My home country, Singapore, is evident of this. The country itself it very small and extremely high-tech, everything seems brand spanking new. Some people say that luxury and technology plays a large part of people lives in Singapore.

One of the newest luxury shopping malls is called ION. Its exterior is in the shape of a curvaceous blob and its interior mirrors that shape. The exterior is made out of glass and it has tiny little lights that shine at night creating a welcoming sensation for the ‘late’ shopper. Inside houses many different stores that follow the curvaceous shape of the exterior. One factor about this mall that struck me was that on every floor, there are little pop-up stations of electronic touch-screen guides. This shopping mall is so large with many different floors and different escalators leading to all different stores that you actually get lost. I have, multiple times. This touch screen directory allows you to search a store or restaurant and actually directs you how to get there. Subsequently, it gives the costumer a biography of the store. Do we really need a biography to accompany a directory in a shopping mall? Are the days of shopping and stumbling upon new stores to create our own bios gone? These questions are raised to me because it seems as if our lives are already depending on technology from a high and necessary level to a lower level, non substantial level of consumerism.

The word hippie brings to mind many things. The most prominent would be tie-dyed shirts, shoes, pants and…bell bottoms. Today, the 21st century hippie, while still dressed comfortably is now fresh faced and streamlined.